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Took on SureFire a few months ago when we needed some quick fixes and really fast. They were tremendously patient carrying us along and we are pretty happy with the results! Highly recommended.read more

Glenn is doing a wonderful job for us at NPH NZ. The results starting appearing straight away and I look forward to continue working with SureFire Search Marketing. I highly recommend their services.read more

We met with Glenn from SureFire in late 2016 and he carefully assessed our business. From that analysis and through consultation with us we were able to better understand where we were headed and how to get there. We made some major changes to short-term and long-term delivery plans which has lead to better growth and less 'lumpy' cash flow. This investment of time and money to work ON the business and not IN it for a change has paid dividends and will continue to do so for years to come.read more

Penguin Update: Google Labels Your Links

Google’s Gary Illyes was interviewed about the latest real-time Penguin release this week and gave further insights into how the algorithm works in relation to links.

In the conversation on the MarketingLand podcast Illyes stated “So, if you think about it, there are tons of different kinds of links on the internet. There are footer links, for example. There are Penguinized links, and all of these kinds of links have certain labels internally attached to them, basically for our own information. And if the manual actions team is reviewing a site for whatever reason, and they see that most of links are labeled as Penguin real-time affected, then they might decide to take a much deeper look on the site and see what’s up with those links and what could be the reason those links exist — and then maybe apply a manual action on the site because of the links.”

The audio for this part of the conversation is below.

This lifts the lid just a little bit more on the real-time Penguin update. As each link is labelled, this builds an internal Google link quality profile for each site, allowing for further review and possibly automated alerts for the manual actions team to act upon.

Why should you care?

Google is dealing with shoddy, low-value links in real-time whenever a site is indexed (by building the profile and adding internal tags). But we now know that the process includes continuing to police and impose manual penalties against sites that have repeated (and intentional) violations.

With this in mind it really is still critical to continue the practice of disavowing shoddy links. Doing so shows you are aware of the issue and that your SEO company or webmaster is actively doing something about it.

Glenn is a Partner and Senior Consultant who has had a very successful career building growth companies in the private equity arena. He has a wealth of experience in both the digital space and strategy development. Prior to becoming a partner in SureFire Glenn built one of the largest digital teams in New Zealand for a NASDAQ listed global online marketing company & Google's largest premium partner.